After Sundance; On Indigenous Resistance

The Burial

The Burial

In Norogachi in the region of Chihuahua north Mexico, Bikoro spends a journey for decolonial method in assembling the history of Native Indian populations in Mexico. For the past and present situation of the Ramuri tribe, the influence of American intervention, trade, economy and coloniality has re-shaped notions of modernity in the desert populations. Particularly the role of women has been formed and re-shaped over the course of the last decades, with increasing violence and segregation in traditional life, Bikoro investigates the fate associated with the women and cultural genocide of the community.

In her performance stages The Burial influenced by the history of the Native Mexican populations who suffered in the hands of the colonial European powers forced into labor in mines and mills. By the 18th century the Native American populations had been reduced to less than 10% of its original population. For those tribes pushed south into Mexico then remained less than 45% in Mexico. This loss was then consequently followed by sixty million African people, captured by the Europeans and forced into slavery.

The Burial is a commemoration to all the people who lost their lives under inhuman and cruel conditions of slavery and injustice.

The work explores the tangible connective histories between West Africa and Latin America and issues of modern identities. For this edition, El Carrusel developed as a site-specific action commemorating the histories of indigenous peoples of Bogota and their sacred lands, and contemporary politics of Bogota. It focuses on the ley line energy points in the Parque del Independencia, an ancient ritual ground for life and death, astrology and communication. Each ley line energy point is being revisited and a ritual of historical remembering re-enacted connecting the past to the contemporary voice of the young.At one energy point rests an abandoned carousel. To connect the carousel to the story of The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, the artist re-activates the old carousel with the strength and solidarity of the donkey. The donkey, after Bresson's Balthazar, is about our anxieties and desires when faced with a living creature who's completely humble and holy. He evokes eroticism, spirituality and christian mysticism. In a donkey's life we see the same stages as in man's.

The donkey in most cultures is a representation of the people, the proletariat, the enslaved and the stupid. Ironically, the donkey is one of the most intelligent & docile mammals on earth and has been represented throughout cultures as a shamed animal, from being represented as a Jew and stoned to death in cages during Nazi Germany to the enslaved animal of labour.In this action, the donkey re-animates the carousel with the artist because it is the imagination of the child and the dreaming of the people from 'below' that will release the curse and make free and unite peoples. The audience joins in the action by helping turn the carousel and children get free rides on the back of the donkey. As the carousel turns with lights and hanging bananas (hanging men), the hanging bananas slowly fall from the ropes and drop free whilst the Grand Kalle music track 'Independence ChaCha' plays continuously in the background.

"The difficulty is that all art is abstract and suggestive at the same time. You cannot show everything, if you do it is no longer art. Art lies in suggestion and the great difficulty is precisely not to show things. Things must be shown in one angle that evoke all the others at once without showing them." Robert Bresson 1966

After Sundance

„this is love“ – Fausto Grossi Terenzio | 2015​The Sun Dance is a ceremony practiced by some indigenous people of America and Canada, primarily those of the plains cultures. After contact with European colonists, and with the formation of Canada and United States, both countries created laws banning ceremonies and even outlawed Indigenous people from speaking their native languages. Those that continued to practice their culture were imprisoned or even killed for doing so. As a result, and in order to preserve Indigenous culture for future generations, most ceremonies went underground and were practiced in secret.Typically, the sun dance is an agonizing ordeal for those who participate. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, young men dance around a pole to which they are fastened by rawhide thongs pegged through the skin of their chests. Although not all sun dance ceremonies include dancers being ritually pierced, the object of the sun dance is to offer personal sacrifice as a prayer for the benefit of one's family and community and a commemoration to the land and the mothers of the community.This circle or sacred altar is the sincere contribution to the survival of future generations.This performance is a promise, a warning, a legacy to First Nations peoples and their continuing fight against cultural amnesia and cultural genocides of past and modern colonisation & slavery as well as the historical erasure and extermination of diverse Asian diaspora communities and their century-long battles of resistance against violence and racism and to the forcibly evicted African-American community once settled in Hogan’s Alley in the (illegal) city of Vancouver, Canada.

The action describes the daily convictions of peoples in Gabon living in conflict against tribal disputes and political violence. It is about the global family that becomes muted and cannot conversate to each other in a dialogue that embraces differences and mutual exchange. Once you take out the tongues and voices of people, you start to live with shame. The broken glass that have been hit to pieces as a game by the audience are the shadows of peoples. The story brings to attention the murder of 34 miners in South Africa in August 2012 who died no longer for their freedom but braught to their own deaths by lack of free choice by the fear of other men. Skipping over broken glass with the feet bleeding and leaving a trail is the child’s strenght to forgive, to see, to act, to create its own voice amidst the muteness it has been forced to live in.